Part 9- Breakout

Allie struggled unsuccessfully to free herself from EJ's kiss. She knew he must be gripping her hard enough to leave bruises on her arms, but she didn't feel any pain. Instead, she was overwhelmed by the revulsion of a tongue pushing her own out of the way, saliva tracking down her cheek, her blouse ripping, and something hard pressing against her waist.

She had resigned herself to waiting this out as she had waited out many unpleasant things in her life when her ears began to ring. No, it wasn't her ears after all; it was a signal from one of the downstairs maids. "Mr. DiMera," her voice crackled over the intercom "There's a fire outside. We think we can get it out, but—"

"Damn and blast." EJ let go of Allie. Her knees were suddenly weak, and she tumbled to the floor. All at once, though, there was a banging at her window, and then the sound of glass shattering. She scrambled to her feet only to see the man she had met on the roof. Was he a bugler after all?

"Are you a prisoner here?" he asked.

After what had just happened, Allie didn't hesitate. Whatever was in store for her with the stranger, it was better than what she was leaving behind. "Yes."

"Do you want to come with me?"

"Yes."

He nodded as if this had been expected and stepped back toward the window. "Take my hand. I set a fire outside as a diversion, but we don't have much time."

Allie picked her way through the shattered glass and onto the roof. She felt terribly young and awkward as she followed her rescuer's graceful movements from one level of roof to the next, to the trellis and finally the ground.

The smell of smoke, thin but noticeable, drifted toward them as they hurried to put as much distance between themselves and the house as they could.

It was only when they were hidden away in a crowd near the entrance to a pub that he murmured "what's your name?"

"Al—Amy."

"Amy," he repeated, and looked her over carefully. Allie tried to keep her gaze steady, but somehow she was sure he realized she was lying. He did not force the matter, however. "I'm Theo. Theo Carver," was all he said as he removed a mobile phone from his pocket.

"I'm calling a friend of friend," he explained.

That didn't sound like a good course of action to Allie. If Theo didn't know these people well, he had no way of telling whether they would send Allie back to her (presumably very angry) guardian. She wanted to say as much, but Theo was already speaking into his mobile.

"Mr. Deveraux? My name is Theo Carver… Will told you. Good… I want to take you up on that. Now. My friend and I really need some help… Thank you. Where, exactly?" He glanced at the face of his mobile. Allie could see a map had appeared, along with directions. "We'll be there soon. See you then."

"How well do you know these people?" Allie asked as Theo started down the street at a good pace.

"Their nephew is a buddy of mine," Theo explained. "The best. Almost like a brother."

"But you don't know them?"

"It'll be fine, Amy. They're good people. My dad's known them for years. It's just that they left Salem when I was a baby."

"Where's Salem?" Allie asked. Her raging curiosity was starting to get the better of her well-grounded fear.

"In the United States."

"I figured that part out. Oh—is it where they hanged the witches?"

Theo chuckled. "That's a different Salem. This one is more toward the middle part of the country."

He answered a few more of Allie's questions as they followed the directions to his friend's uncle's house. Allie resisted the urge to dive behind the nearest car and hide when Theo opened the creaky gate at the bottom of a short flight of stairs.

A tall man with dark hair and blue eyes opened the door before they reached it. He was older than even Allie's guardian, but he was still very handsome. His eyes skimmed over Theo and locked on Allie.

"Sami," he murmured almost involuntarily.

Theo looked from him to Allie in confusion. "Mr. Deveraux, this is my friend Amy," he began, but to no avail. Mr. Deveraux paid him no mind, instead choosing to lean down so he and Allie could stare into one another's faces.

"Alice Horton the Second," Mr. Deveraux muttered. "They called you Allie, didn't they? God, you look like your mother." Allie's stomach turned. Who could this man possibly be that he not only knew her name (except for the "second" part), but that she looked like her long-dead mother?

"Her name," Theo began defensively, "is Amy—"

For the first time, Theo had Mr. Deveraux's attention. "Where the hell did you find her?" he snarled. Before Theo could answer, Mr. Deveraux had drawn them inside and locked the door behind them. Then he shouted to someone called Abigail that she should lock all of the windows and close all the blinds upstairs as he did the same downstairs.

Allie backed toward the door. Maybe she had made a terrible mistake. Maybe her guardian had only kept her confined to keep her safe from people like this Mr. Deveraux who wanted no one to know that she was here.

Mr. Deveraux noticed her attempted retreat and reached out to stop her. When she recoiled, so did he, and he settled for saying "no one wants to hurt you."

Allie wanted to ask why he had to lock the doors and close the blinds, but what came out was "How did you know my name? You knew my mother?"

He nodded. "Your mother and I were great friends. She was married to my wife's brother—your father."

"Wouldn't that make you my uncle?" Allie asked warily.

"That's one word for it."

"What's another word for it?"

Mr. Deveraux appeared to give the matter serious consideration. "That's really the only word for it, at least in English" he decided.

Theo looked from Mr. Deveraux to Allie and back again as if he were watching a ping pong match. "You're saying she's Will's sister?" he demanded.

"Where did you find her?" Mr. Deveraux repeated without answering Theo's question.

Allie took advantage of their distraction to make a second attempt to escape. The coincidence of being deposited in a long-lost uncle's living room was too much. This had to be an elaborate ruse. She wasn't sure what she would do on her own—singing for change on the street and getting herself adopted by a non-crazy family were possibilities—but she could decide that later.

She shrieked in surprise when a soft hand touched her shoulder. She hadn't seen the woman enter the room.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you," the woman soothed while Allie tried to stop shaking.

"Who are you?" asked Allie, because everything was strange and the time for politeness had passed.

The woman took pity on Allie and let her demand slide. "I'm Abby Deveraux. This is my father's house. I'm visiting."

Allie studied Abby Deveraux carefully. All of her instincts screamed that this woman was trustworthy. "I'm Allie Horton."

Abby's eyes widened, but she kept her comments to herself, for which Allie was more than grateful. Instead, with a detached air, she evaluated Allie's torn clothing and the bruises on her arms. "Let's find a shirt for you that isn't ripped," Abby suggested. "We can clean up those cuts and maybe put ice on that bruise?"

Allie felt her skin crawl at the memory of EJ's hands and lips on her body. A wash sounded even better than escape.

"Yes, please," she murmured to her… cousin? She didn't think she would mind being this woman's cousin, if Mr. Deveraux's crazy story happened to be true.

"Come on, then." Abby led Allie up the stairs and into a bathroom. Allie glanced longingly at the shower, and Abby smartly followed her eyes. "I bet you'd feel better after a shower, but there's one thing I need to ask you first." Abby's voice was warm and gentle, but Allie cringed as she realized what Abby was about to ask.

"He didn't rape me," Allie blurted out.

Abby exhaled sharply; it was the first sign of anxiety Allie had seen from her. "But he did hurt you?"

"No," whispered Allie, but her body betrayed her and her head nodded "yes."

"Only one man?" Abby prompted.

Allie thought that one was quite enough. "Yes. My guardian," she explained hastily, lest Abby believe for even an instant that Allie was casting aspersions on Theo.

"Has he done this before?"

"Didn't you say there was only one thing you needed to ask me?" Allie returned. She meant to sound forceful and streetwise, but her voice came out in a frightened mewl instead. "No one raped me. I won't wash away any evidence." Then she realized that she was practically begging to be allowed to disrobe in this strange house with these strange people who claimed to be long lost relatives. "I don't need a shower anyway."

"We'll start with those cuts and bruises. Then you can decide." Abby stepped from the room, and in an instant returned with a nondescript pink t-shirt. "This should do for now. At least it's not ripped. If you end up staying here for a few days, we'll buy whatever you'd like to wear."

Allie shook her head emphatically. "I'm not staying."

"Then where are you going?"

"I'll—there are shelters. I'll figure something out."

"Don't you think your guardian might find you there?"

"How do I know he won't find me here?"

"We're your family. We aren't going to give you up to someone who hurt you. But a shelter might have to, if he's your legal guardian."

Allie shrugged. "How do I know you're my family? Isn't it a little too much of a coincidence that Theo found me, not knowing who I was, and brought me to my uncle's house?"

"I don't think it's much of a coincidence at all. Theo wasn't there for no reason, you know. His family owns that house—"

"Theo's not related to the DiMeras!"

"Theo's mother is a woman named Lexie Carver. Her father was Stefano DiMera, so if the man you were living with was Stefano's son EJ, yes, he is related to Theo. Just because people in his family have done bad things, though, that doesn't mean he does bad things, too."

Allie thought of Johnny and knew that was true. She gestured that Abby should continue.

"Theo and the DiMeras have family in Salem, and so do you and I. The DiMeras took you and your mother from Salem when you were a baby. Theo's good friends with my cousin—your brother—Will. So of course he'd come to Will's family here when he needed help."

The way Abby put it, it almost made sense. "I have a broth—" Allie began, when there was a knock at the open door. Mr. Deveraux—Uncle Jack?—had appeared without warning. Allie flinched and started to shake. His sudden appearance reminded her of the sudden appearances of her guardian, and he was tall like her guardian, and—

"Dad, maybe you want to go…?" Allie was shaking too hard to discern exactly where Abby thought her father should go. But she did notice that something unspoken passed between them. Allie knew that Mr. Deveraux didn't want to leave, but was doing it at Abby's suggestion.

"I'll do that," he agreed at last. "Abigail," he added, carefully keeping his distance from Allie, "Theo is downstairs arguing with Jett over the phone. All the doors and windows are locked and covered. If your mother and JJ come home, you'll have to let them in because the deadbolts are thrown."

"Thanks, Dad."

It took Allie a few minutes to make the shaking stop, but when it did, she finally felt comfortable enough to change out of the destroyed shirt and let Abby bandage her bleeding arms. At long last, she was able to use a washcloth to scrub some of the felling of her guardian's mouth off of her face.

The receptionist at the long-term care facility knew Jack by sight, although she had to be reminded of his name before granting him permission to visit Sami. As always, she was unfailingly polite and professional. The whole of the building was clean, even if it reeked of the classic mixture of excrement and disinfectant. It was a sad smell, but the place was a sad place.

Visiting Sami was something Jack did regularly, in spite of the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that it felt like a penance. At some level, he wondered if some of the wrongs he had done in his life—there had been many wrongs—were visiting themselves upon him when he looked at his friend lying insensate, put into hospital bed by a man who had decided he would possess her at any cost.

Sami's room was filled with flowers, as it always was. On the rare occasions that they discussed the matter, Jennifer insisted that Sami must appreciate the flowers in her periodic bursts of consciousness.

Jack would have liked to agree.

He didn't.

He didn't think Sami was capable of appreciating anything. She lacked all sense of coherence in her conscious moments. Once, two years before, Jack had happened to be in her room when she came around, and when she'd opened her eyes he'd had a sense like a sucker punch that she knew exactly who he was. But nothing of the kind had happened since, and he'd almost convinced himself that that had been a product of his overactive imagination.

Jack sat in his usual place beside Sami's bed. "Sami, it's Jack. Can you hear me?"

There was no response. There never was.

"There's no way to prepare you for what I'm about to say. It's good news, though. Good news, but it could be a shock. It's about your daughter. Little Alice, Allie. She's at my house right now. Don't worry, Abigail is with her. Abigail is good in these situations—remember I told you about the work she did in that hospital in Africa? But you don't want to hear about Abigail. Allie, she, well, she looks a lot like you. I recognized her as soon as I saw her. There was no one else she could possibly be. Take a picture of you at thirteen and one of her now, and you couldn't tell who was who except for the clothes and the hairstyle. I thought Jennifer and Abigail looked a lot alike, but this is amazing."

He thought for a moment. What else would Sami want to hear, if she could? What would he want to hear, if someone was telling him about JJ?

"We'll make sure she gets back to Lucas and Will safely, of course. There are so many people in Salem who want to take care of her, and who missed her. They miss, you, too. We all do. So any time you want to wake up and say 'hi' to Allie and Will and even your old friend Jack…"

Sami did not seem inclined to do any of that.

When Allie emerged from the bathroom with her face flushed red from a hard scrubbing, Abby was waiting with a series of heavy books.

"The Hortons are big on photo albums," Abby explained. "We've got a website, too, with digital pictures, but practically everyone in the family has a set like this." She flipped the first volume open. "This is the only one I've found of you so far. You and your dad, Uncle Lucas." Allie stared at the photograph. She felt nothing. The man was a stranger; the baby could have been anyone.

Abby flipped backwards a few pages. Allie gasped in spite of herself. "Your mom and dad's wedding picture," Abby narrated unnecessarily. Allie had seen pictures of her mother before, and this was undoubtedly her, looking strikingly like Allie (but older and more beautiful). And her mother was beaming at the man who had held the baby in the previous picture.

Allie's stomach flipped. There was no way her mother had ever loved her guardian, or anyone else, the way she loved this man.

There were more pictures from the wedding. Abby pointed out Allie's brother Will, and Allie studied him carefully. She had always pretended to herself that Johnny was her brother, but Will seemed nice, too.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Allie felt warm and comfortable. But just as she began to relax, the shuttered window behind them exploded into a million pieces of shattered glass. Someone clasped something over her mouth; she could see the same thing happening to Abby before everything went black.

TBC